Where was A Good Year filmed?

This warm-hearted comedy trades city ambition for vineyard sunshine, and in doing so it became a quiet advertisement for one of France's most beloved corners. Its appeal for travellers lies in the fantasy it serves up so generously: cracked terracotta, dusty lanes, a long lunch in the shade and the slow realisation that the good life was waiting in the south all along.

The film is rooted in Provence, in the Luberon hills, where the inherited estate is the genuine Château la Canorgue, a working winery whose honey-coloured stone and tree-lined approach anchor the story. The nearby hilltop village of Gordes, with its tiered stone houses spilling down the slope, stands in for the sun-drenched Provence the film falls for.

Set-jetters can base themselves in the Luberon and string together its perched villages, vineyards and markets at an unhurried pace. The region pairs beautifully with neighbouring Provençal towns and the lavender country to the east in summer, making this an easy anchor for a leisurely southern French road trip built around wine, stone and slow afternoons.